Birds around Town

Having taken 10 days off it was back to work and time for just short trips to add birds for the year. An evening walk along the Rio de Flag at Willow Bend with my wife on March 28th yielded Wilson's Snipe, and I joined a Northern Arizona Audubon field trip three days later to add a few more birds to the list. Two days later I went to Mormon Lake in hopes of finding some lingering winter birds and added Evening Grosbeak and Rough-legged Hawk as well as Golden Eagle and Chipping Sparrow to my year's list.

Wilson's Snipe

At a short stop at the Glendale Recharge ponds just prior to business at ASU West, I added three 'easy' birds. I then added Brewer's Blackbird at the Walnut Canyon ponds, a Broad-tailed Hummingbird in my yard and White-faced Ibis and Violet-green Swallow at the Kachina Wetlands over the next couple of weeks.

Long-billed Dowitcher

Rainham

Brown Rat

Thetford

White-throated Dipper

St. James's Park

Eastern Gray Squirrel

Common Pochard

Eurasian Coot

Grey Heron

Southend

Brent Goose

Dunlin

Sanderling

Ruddy Turnstone

Old Hall Marshes

Redshank

Northern Lapwing

(Eurasian) Green-winged Teal

Abberton Reservoir

Little Grebe

Eurasian Kestrel

Ring-necked Pheasant

Lee Valley

Great Tit

Long-tailed Tit

Indian Muntjac

Stock Doves

Langdon Hills

Tufted Duck

European Rabbit

Eurasian Blue Tit

Prescott

On March 2nd we went to Prescott for the day. I was hoping to find the Tundra Swans (Willow Lake), White-winged Scoter (Watson Lake) and Hooded Mergansers (Watson Woods) but dipped on them all. We also stopped by at the Western Screech-owl spot in Camp Verde on the way home. No luck there either. We had a change in fortune as a Great Horned Owl fly over as we drove into town at sunset.

Phoenix

On February 22nd my son and I went down to Phoenix to meet my wife who was flying in from LA. We spent some time on Friday evening, and then as a family on Saturday morning, in Papago Park chasing down some easy desert birds. We found two of our target birds Cactus Wren and Gambel's Quail.

Cactus Wren

Curve-billed Thrasher

Anna's Hummingbird

Common Gallinule

Desert Cottontail

Roundtail Ground Squirrel

In the early afternoon we headed out to the thrasher spot in Buckeye where we found Crissal's Thrasher and Le Conte's Thrasher. We then drove back via the agricultural fields around Arlington and saw a small group of Sandhill Cranes and my first Vermillion Flycatcher of 2013.

Vermillion Flycatcher